Headache
by anon33125
Summary: Just a one-shot about Kakashi's quiet life. He goes back to his apartment to heal a headache after training his three genin. Set pre-everything, no spoilers, just musings. Characters owned by Kishimoto


Kakashi pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb, he could feel a headache coming on. It was days like these that made him wish he could have stayed in ANBU. Between Naruto and Sasuke's bickering and Sakura caught between yelling at Naruto or mooning over Sasuke, simple D rank missions with the three were truly unbearable. He almost wished they could go back to Mist and fight Zabuza again, a nice A rank mission to keep them busy.

He sighed deeply through his nose as he finally collapsed on his bed in his own quiet apartment. He'd landed a place in one of Konoha's elderly citizens' special housing buildings. His ANBU team had made endless fun of him for it, behind his back of course, but he knew he'd landed the jackpot. The woman down the hall made the best chocolate chip cookies, the man across from him tended a rooftop garden (which Kakashi and Tenzo had helped build) so they got fresh free vegetables every season, and, the best part of all, was the silence. Elderly folks had no interest in the drinking, gambling lifestyle that most shinobi found fulfilling. They also had no constant rambunctious children crying and banging on walls. There were no loud parties and the water for showering was never too cold.

Sure, at 17, when he got the place, he was as far as could be from elderly, but even then, his pull with Sandaime was clear. He would only accept the ANBU captain job if he were allowed to live in a civilian over-the-age-of-50 compound. The Hokage had pulled through, so Kakashi became one of the most legendary ANBU captains in return. And, now that he was training the brats, being able to come home to this serenity was the best he could have asked for. His headache was already being soothed as soon as he'd stepped through the building's entrance gate.

Of course there was also the fact that he had a tendency to get chakra exhausted to the extent of only being as physically capable as the average 85-year old man, but that was beside the point.

After a moment of bliss lying on his bed, he stood and pulled off his jounin vest. That was quickly followed by his long-sleeve black shirt and his protective chainmail shirt underneath, leaving only his skin-tight sleeveless black shirt with the mask attached. Then went the bindings on his feet and his day-wear pants. On went his comfy sweatpants. He padded barefoot to his kitchen and started a kettle on the stove to boil water for tea.

As he waited for the tea to boil, he went to his bathroom to wash his face. Kakashi washed his face almost obsessively, when you have sensitive skin, you really have no choice unless you want to be itching all the time. That was actually the whole reason for the mask. Kakashi was mostly albino, the silver-white hair, the pale white skin? Sure, those attributes made many people find him insanely attractive (and, you know, his lean muscles), but being albino definitely wasn't all it cracked up to be, he got sick easily as an infant, so his parents eventually put him in a mask. His skin would often break out in hives or rashes, if something so simple as even the fragrance of laundry soap was changed. At first, he had been told that exposure was key to building up a resistance to the factors that bothered him. Eventually, he learned that it was just easier to keep himself fully covered. If the rest of his village was content to consider him 'mysterious' or 'hip and cool', he was fine with that. They really didn't need to be aware of every personal detail about him. As long as no one went near his laundry detergent or forced him to take his clothes off. Both of these are the exact reason he hated hospitals.

Hospital sheets were always washed in bleach detergents, bleach just so happened to be one of the most aggravating substances to Kakashi's skin. And the hospital always removed most of his clothes, so every inch of his skin became red, raw, and itchy. Out of all the hospital employees, he could only persuade about 5 of the nurses to rewash his sheets in his personal hypo-allergenic, scentless detergent. Otherwise, the medics paid him no attention, said it was just his wounds healing, or that he was just being dramatic, they had more insistent cases to deal with.

So, he washed his face for the third time that day, fixed his cup of tea, and settled himself cross-legged in his favorite old armchair by the window so he could set his book and his mug on the sill. He had recently gotten this new book from the bookstore and was excited to finally be able to sit down with it. It was an exploration of the ancient underground cities deep within Wind country, hidden below the deserts. Kakashi had a bit of earth-natured chakra to his name, and he'd used many a jutsu to go underground, so this area of research fascinated him. People who built cities underground as an escape, or cities that were built above ground, but the earth overtook them and buried them. He took a sip of his tea and cracked open the book, settling back to enjoy the last remaining silent rays of the sunset, his headache almost completely banished.


End file.
